


Christmas Confession

by SmokySky



Series: Tommy Shelby's 12 Days Of Christmas [9]
Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: As It Has Been All Along, Drunken Confessions, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Love Confessions, Requited Love, Requited Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:34:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21972172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SmokySky/pseuds/SmokySky
Summary: A 12 Days of Christmas Advent Calendar fic not based off a specific prompt.Tommy and Mabel finally admit their feelings for each other. It's a good thing she loves him back.
Relationships: Tommy Shelby/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Tommy Shelby's 12 Days Of Christmas [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1559590
Comments: 6
Kudos: 43





	Christmas Confession

**Author's Note:**

> Part 8 of my12 Christmas-themed oneshots: this one isn't technically based on any Christmas prompt, but I decided it was time that I finally get to them admitting their feelings.
> 
> Tommy finally works up the courage to tell Mabel how he feels...at two in the morning. While he's drunk.

Arthur and John cheered as Tommy downed the last of his gin, slamming the glass down on the bar with a determined nod, before heading out of the warm, Christmassy air in the pub and into the snow outside.

Tonight was the night.

He was going to tell Mabel he loved her.

Mabel...his best friend in the whole world: better than Freddie, or his brothers, or anyone. Everyone had thought that they would last, that boys and girls couldn’t be friends, but Tommy and Mabel had proved them wrong. And now Tommy was going to prove everyone who thought he wasn’t man enough to confess to Mabel that he loved her wrong too. Then Mabel was going to tell him that she loved him too, and they were going to kiss in the snow or whatever she wanted to do, and it was going to make his Christmas. He had it all planned out - nothing could go wrong.

_ Unless she doesn’t love me back. _

Tommy viciously crushed the unwanted thought as soon as it cropped up. Mabel did love him back; everyone said so...and even if he wouldn’t trust Arthur and John’s judgements, he did trust Ada’s and Aunt Pol’s. Besides, as they’d told him, the evidence was right in front of him.

Mabel could have any man she wanted. Despite them being only seventeen,  _ (and despite her not technically living in Small Heath) _ she was the most beautiful girl Small Heath had ever seen, at least in Tommy’s opinion. And it wasn’t just him - plenty of their peers had shown an interest in her: Freddie, Danny, even John at one point - but even without Tommy and Arthur _ (and John when he wasn’t the one half in love with her) _ scaring them off, Mabel had never shown an interest in any of them. And she’d never given a reason as to why, even when Ada had wondered why she’d let Leonard ‘Oh-just-call-me-Leo’ Greenwood, good-looking son of a very rich banker walk away from her. Because, just like she had with Leonard, Mabel didn’t just let men walk away from her: she told them to fuck off, and Tommy lived for it.

Seeing arrogant rich boys who saw her in that posh shop she worked in approach her when they saw her again in the pub: watching Mabel listen to their advances and tolerate their hands on her with a sweet, patronising (although the men bothering her never seemed to see that bit) smile, and then having to hid is laughter when she leaned into them just to tell them she wouldn’t fuck them if they were the last man on earth.

At the time, he hadn’t needed to know why she did it - and in the past, he’d just been too happy to see her rejecting other boys to care about her reasons - but now he did know why, and he was even happier than when he’d heard her posh, cut glass telling bloke after bloke that she wasn’t interested.

Just like he knew why she knitted him warm, soft scarves, why she made sure the family’s books were straight without asking for anything in return, and why she got him a pocket watch he would treasure forever: engraved with the message that she would love him forever. Because she loved him.

_ She loves me the same way I love her. _

She loved him in the way he loved her: a way that meant he’d never looked at other girls, just as she’d never looked at other boys. A way that meant making sure she was protected even if it was just walking down the same street she always walked down, just as she protected his business’ books.

Now if she could just tell him she loved him, that would be perfect.

Of course, it shouldn’t all be on her - which was why Tommy was clumsily climbing up the back of her house to knock on her bedroom window. Maybe the middle of the night wasn’t the ideal time for confessions...but if he didn’t do this now, he might never work up the courage again.

“Tommy? It’s gone two in the morning - what’s wrong?”

Tommy took a few seconds to appreciate the view he was being treated to: Mabel still half-asleep: blonde curls mussed wildly around her face, bright eyes still soft and a little hazy, her hastily thrown-on robe half undone and exposing the modest white cotton nightdress she’d worn to bed. And he was lucky enough to be the only man to ever get to see her like this.

But he couldn’t just look at her. He needed to speak: needed to act. And he needed to do it now.

“Mabel Oakes, I love you. I’ve loved you since you said John had a stupid face when we were six, even if it took me a little while to realise it.”

Mabel looked at him in silence for a few seconds, before stepping back from the window: “Okay, you’re slurring a little much for me to be able to understand, but I think I get the gist, so you better come in. Before you fall off the ledge.”

“‘M not slurring.” Tommy protested...but he accepted Mabel’s support when he stumbled over his own feet trying to climb in her room.

Luckily, she was smiling when he looked up at her from where she’d pushed him to sit on her bed: “Yeah, you are, and you  _ reek  _ of gin...but I still heard the important bit. You love me.”

“I do. I really, really do.”

“It’s good to know.”

Tommy swallowed, suddenly feeling a little sick.

Because Mabel hadn’t said she loved him back. Sure, she’d heard him, and she was smiling at him, but all of a sudden Tommy was feeling the affect of every drop of gin he’d consumed, and he couldn’t tell if Mabel’s smile was a happy one...or a pitying one.

He didn’t know what he would do if he was wrong, if he’d just embarrassed himself in front of his best friend…

He’d never be able to look Mabel in the eye ever again. He would have to leave Birmingham, forever, just so he never had to be faced with the results of his own overconfidence. He’d never be able to live it down.

Good God, what have I done…

“...listening to me?”

“No.” Tommy sniffed: “I’m panicking.”

“Oh, Tommy.” Mabel cooed, reaching out to cup his cheeks and using her thumbs to wipe away tears Tommy didn’t remember crying: “Please don’t cry.”

Tommy cleared his throat, trying to stop anymore tears from escaping: “But you don’t love me!”

“Yes I do, you idiot!”

Tommy froze.

_ Did she just…? _

__

Unfreezing, Tommy lunged forwards to end up kneeling on the floor in front of Mabel, clutching her hands desperately. She had just. She had just said she loved him! Maybe she hadn’t actually said the three words - but she didn’t need to, because she had called him wrong when he said she didn’t love him, and that meant she  _ did  _ love him. She loved him!

Mabel Oakes loved him!

“Do you mean it?” Tommy breathed reverently.

Mabel nodded, beaming down at him: “I mean it. I love you, Tommy.  _ I love you _ .”

_ I love you. I love you. I love you. _

The words were ringing in Tommy’s ears: making him feel like he’d been punched in the head in the best way possible. Because Mabel fucking loved him! He wanted to shout it from the rooftops at the top of his lungs, until all of Birmingham knew he was Mabel’s, and she was his...but even drunk, Tommy knew that probably wasn’t the best of ideas with Mabel’s father and brothers in the house.

Jumping up, Tommy shut himself up the only way he could think of. By kissing Mabel.

She kissed him back as soon as his lips met hers: hands clasping at the back of his neck while his fingers threaded through her hair: both of them pulling the other closer as their lips moved against each other, like they were repeating themselves over and over again.

_ I love you. I love you. I love you. _

Tommy ran his tongue over Mabel’s lower lip, silently asking Mabel for more, but instead she reluctantly pulled back: “I’m not kissing you while you’re this drunk.”

“S’okay...” Tommy breathed against her lips: “You love me. S’all that counts.”

Mabel chuckled: “You’re easily pleased when you’re drunk.”

“I’m easily pleased when you tell me you love me.” Tommy grinned. Because how could anything upset him tonight?

This was the best Christmas  _ ever _ .

Better than the Christmas when she had demanded he help her decorate the Watery Lane house. Better than the year when she gave the scarf she knitted him after he got sick. Even better than last year, when she gave him the pocket watch she’d had engraved for him. 

“Then I’ll keep saying it.” Mabel grinned: “I love you, Thomas Shelby.”

“I love you too, Mabel Oakes.” 


End file.
